


Your (un)Lucky Break

by itsallAvengers



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe- Internships, Author knows fuckall about workplace environment so take this all with a pinch of salt, Drunk Steve Rogers, Getting Together, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Miscommunication and Various Office Shenanigans, Tony Makes A Terrible First Impression, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Young Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallAvengers/pseuds/itsallAvengers
Summary: At the beginning of the summer break when Howard sees Tony on the front page of the Daily Bugle locking lips with another man, he decides it's time to get the boy to knuckle down a bit and sends him off to do an internship at Stark Industries. Tony, who had plans to spend the holiday building robots and getting drunk with Rhodey, is very much against this idea, and decides he's going to do everything he can to get himself fired immediately.Poor Steve Rogers is the man who ends up being tasked to train him up.





	Your (un)Lucky Break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fd1922](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fd1922/gifts).



> for @fd1922, who asked for a college/intern au with Tony being made to intern and Steve being the poor guy who ends up having to take him on. I really loved writing this prompt!

He woke up to the rather uncomfortable sensation of sunlight attacking him, and the screeching sound of curtains scaping open across the railings.

Fuck. The fact that the noise alone was making his head throb painfully was definitely not a good sign.

He felt himself whine in distress, and rolled to face his pillow. That lasted all of two moments, however, before he heard sharp footsteps over the wooden floor and then the sudden jolt as a hand came and snatched the pillow away from the bed. “Hey, what the fuck?”

Cracking open an eye, he stared up at his father, glaring at him with as much warmth as a polar icecap.

Brilliant.

“Get up,” Howard said bluntly, slamming a glass of water down on the sideboard. “Drink this. Then get showered and changed. You smell like ass.”

“Good morning to you too, Howard,” Tony muttered, running a hand over his face. “Can you maybe give me five minutes just to g-“

“I’m not giving you jack-shit, boy,” Howard hissed, and Oh Good, that meant he was pissed. Over what exactly, Tony wasn’t quite sure.

Then again, he couldn’t exactly remember all that much from last night. So.

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, holding back the urge to say something sarcastic. He already had a headache- Howard screaming at him or giving him a backhand across the face would undoubtedly not help matters much.

Howard’s glare continued to freeze into him. “It  _means_ , Anthony, that I’ve had it up to here with your bullshit attention-seeking.” He raised a finger up high to emphasize his words, “last night was the final straw. I am completely serious here. I know you’re goddamn desperate for people to fawn all over you, but this? Are you fucking kidding me? No. This stops, now.”

Tony blinked in confusion, trying to think back. It had been a party, yeah, but he went to that sort of thing almost every week, and Howard didn’t really care either way. He’d been doing it since he was fourteen, for God’s sake, why was he getting uppity about it  _now_? All Tony had done was go round to some guy’s place for drinks and whatever else he’d been offeri-

 

Ah. Yes.

 

“In my defence,” Tony said hurriedly, beginning to shuffle away a little, just in case, “I had no idea that people were taking pictures-“

Before he could finish, Howard slammed the latest copy of the Daily Bugle down on his desk so hard that it rocked the stand. Tony jumped, looking warily at the front cover. Then his heart sank right down into his shoes.

It was him and- Marcus? Marco?- on the roof of his car, locked in a rather passionate embrace. Both of them were holding bottles of some sort, but there was no doubt about where Tony’s free hand was.   
The guy  _had_  had a wonderful ass. He remembered that much, at the very least.

“Do you know how much that one fucking image has caused stocks to drop over the past 12 hours?” Howard glowered, voice low and dangerous, “your inability to keep your ridiculous ‘alternative’ lifestyle out of the papers, or actually think with something other than your goddamn dick for more than three consecutive seconds has just lost us thousands of dollars’ worth of stocks.”

Tony sighed, feeling Howard’s obnoxiously loud voice grate in his ears. This was not good. This was very very not good. Howard… well, aside from the sly and vicious little comments now and then, he tended to just pretend Tony wasn’t even into guys at all. The only thing he’d ever talked to Tony about in regards to the subject was one simple phrase:  _‘whatever you do, keep it private. Do not let word get out that my son is a queer, alright?’_

And what had Tony just gone and done?

“Look, Dad,” Tony began, making sure to keep his voice non-confrontational, but Howard waved a hand and silenced him before he could continue.

“No. I don’t want you to try and wheedle your way out of this, not this time. I’ve let you do whatever you want whilst you’ve been at MIT, I’ve been good to you, and you’re throwing it back in my face like that? I asked for one thing, Tony.  _One_ : Don’t let this… this phase of yours get into the press. And you’ve gone and undermined me like that-“

“I had no idea there was someone taking-“

“I DON’T CARE!” Howard snarled, and Tony shut his mouth quickly. There was no point arguing this. Howard was in a mood, and Tony’s head hurt too much to do anything about it. Howard was breathing heavily, but then he shut his eyes and shook his head, leaning against the wall. “I have to do something with you. I can’t just let this go on all summer break, not when it’s me and my company’s reputation that takes the fall for it. You’ve only just begun break, and when you go back you’re going to be finishing your masters. You need to get your head screwed on straight before then, so you can show everyone what it really means to be a Stark. Not…” he slapped a hand down on the picture, crumpling it with his fist, “not  _this_ , but something people actually think is worthwhile.”

Tony said nothing, but inwardly, he could feel his heart begin to sink. This sounded as if Howard had already decided upon something, and it would undoubtedly be something that Tony would not enjoy even slightly.

Howard paused for a second, before lifting off the wall and then beginning to walk back to the door. “I’ve signed you onto the Stark internship course,” he declared, “you’ll be working in the human resources department, which will give you a feel for work life. You’re doing it, Tony. This isn’t up for debate.”

That finally got Tony to sit up with a jerk, despite the burst of pain it sparked behind his eyes. “What?” He said hurriedly, shaking his head, “no, Howard, come on, you know I’ve got plans this summer-“

_“What part of ‘this isn’t up for debate’ do you not fucking understand?”_ Howard asked him dangerously, pausing at the foot of the door. And Jheeze- Tony was an adult now, he was  _eighteen_  okay, Howard shouldn’t scare him any more- but he still backed himself up against the headboard and made himself look smaller on instinct anyway. “I want you to be doing something this summer, not just sitting around making me look bad.”

“I was gonna go over to Rhodey’s and work on the bots, dad, you know that, come on-“

“I’ve already told you, Rhodey is probably only around because you’re rich, kid,” Howard sneered and shook his head, “and as for the bots- they’re a waste of time anyway. Stop trying to fancy yourself as some one-in-a-million kid, and learn how to do a proper fucking job.”

Tony scowled, his hackles rising at both of the comments. Fuck Howard- Rhodey was totally around for more than that- and the bots  _weren’t_  a waste of time. They might be a little slow right now, but they were a learning program for Christ’s sake, they weren’t  _supposed_  to be perfect. “You know, you don’t actually have that power over me. I can just say no. I’m not stuck under your thumb any more,” he tried, feeling the surge of anger give him a brief moment of bravery.

Which he immediately regretted when Howard turned around, marched over and then lifted his hand. Tony shied away immediately and braced for impact, but it didn’t come. When he cracked an eye open a few moments later, Howard was staring down at him with a vindictive little smile on his face, hand still lifted in the air.

“No power over you, huh?” He asked, looking smug as he dropped his hand. When Tony continued to just glare mutinously at him, he sighed, and then stepped back again with a disappointed shake of his head. “You do this internship, Tony, or you don’t go back to MIT after break ends. Understood?”

Tony looked up at him incredulously. “You can’t do that! I got in on a scholarship anyway, there’s-“

“I can do whatever I damn well please; I’m Howard Stark, I  _funded_  half of that damn college- if I ask them to pull you out, they’ll damn well pull you out!” Howard snapped, and Tony’s next words caught on his mouth as he realized that Howard was right in that sense. The man had a truly terrifying amount of power- it was one of the reasons Tony hadn’t been able to pack up and move the fuck out yet. He knew that if he did it without the right prep, Howard would make his life hell.

Fuck.

He glared up at his father for a few seconds, before turning away and staring at the wall. Goddamn it. He’d been looking forward to going over to Rhodey’s for months. His family were… God, they were actually  _nice_ , and they hugged him whenever he visited, and-

And he was apparently going to have to cancel on them.

“I’m doing this for your own good, Anthony,” Howard called out as he turned on his heel and walked for the door, “we need to make you into a businessman, not some airy-fairy partygoer. It’s high time you joined up- I’m just sorry I didn’t make this happen sooner. Get dressed and ready. We’re going in at 11.”

Tony blinked, turning back to him with an open mouth. “Wait- it starts  _today_?”

Howard didn’t even bother to respond to that one. Just shut the door with a slam and left Tony to it in his room, the stupid fucking sun still blinding his sensitive eyes. Tony stared at the door with an open mouth, before scowling and sticking his middle finger up at the space Howard had just vacated. “Asshole,” he muttered viciously, “fucking piece of shit, good-for-nothing, deadbeat  _bastard_.”

 

Hungover, alone, and  _thoroughly_  pissed off, Tony spent a few more seconds glowering before he flopped back down on his bed and groaned loudly.

This… this was going to be a fun,  _fun_  day.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

A huge binder of paperwork was slammed on his desk, and Steve looked up tiredly at Nat, who just smiled at him sympathetically. They’d been going through all these files for at least four days by this point, and Steve felt as if it was never going to end. “What number’s this?” He asked wearily, picking it up and trying to predict how long it would take to get through it by its weight alone.

“There’s fifteen more to go, but Bucky and Sam have got 9 of them between them, so you only have to do six.” She patted him on the head and then leaned on the desk, peering at his computer screen. “What’s on the agenda today after you’ve gotten through all this?”

Steve glanced over to it, before shrugging. “Nothing much. Need to call up Radcliffe down in Maintenance and get him to clear up the spillage Thor made with the pizzas yesterday. Uhh, then I think I’ve gotta go to a meeting with Coulson to talk about the pay rise needed for-“

He was cut off suddenly as the doors of his office burst open, and Steve jumped at the sight of Bruce’s wide eyes and out-of-breath manner. He leaned against the door for a moment whilst Natasha and Steve simply stared at him in confusion, before regaining the ability to speak and walking forward rapidly. “Steve, Howard Stark is visiting.”

It took a moment for him to process that sentence. He blinked at Bruce dumbly, and then looked to Nat, who was also staring blankly at him. “What?” He choked out in the end, leaning forward over his desk a little.

“He’s just come up onto 43rd floor, Bucky and I both saw him,” Bruce told him, pushing his glasses up onto his nose, “he… his son was with him, I think. He saw us staring and asked Bucky which office you were in. I came up as fast as I could in case you were trying to make popcorn with a Bunsen burner again.”

Steve jumped to his feet hurriedly, running a hand through his hair and flattening it into something more presentable whilst his spare one straightened the mess of papers on his desk. “Okay, A) That was  _one_  time and Sam was sick, I wanted to make him laugh, and B) why the fuck is Howard Stark visiting me with his son?”

Howard Stark, of course, was the owner of the entire fucking company, and world-renowned for being an unimpressed, miserable bastard. Steve had only met him once before, when he’d first been hired as manager- and it had been purely to judge and see what all the hype over Steve was about. He’d come into Stark Industries two years ago now, and it had been big news when he’d been promoted to manager. Steve had only been 21 years old, which had made him one of the youngest ever to take up the role. It was something he was incredibly proud of, and he’d worked hard all his life to be able to take up a position in life that meant he was financially stable.

But now Howard was, apparently, on his way to Steve’s office. And that could not be good.

“Natasha, Bruce, is there  _anything_  incriminating in my office?” Steve asked them urgently, looking around his room in a panic, “did Bucky draw dicks anywhere? Any half-eaten sandwiches lying around?”

All three of them looked around the room, but came up clean. Steve breathed a sigh of relief at that small mercy. At least he wouldn’t get fired over that. “Okay, Bruce, Nat, just go back down to 43 again, I’ll call you up when we’re d-“

Before he finished, however, the doors of his office were pushed open- no knock, no wait, just Howard Stark, marching straight in.  
And behind him, with his eyes on the floor, shoulders tight and face sullen, was his son Tony.  

Steve stood ramrod straight, hoping to god his tie was neat, and waved to his two friends, signalling for them to leave. However, Howard just shook his head and then turned, pulling his son forward smoothly. “No need to make them leave, I’m not staying long. This is Tony, my son, as you probably know.”

Steve nodded, and when Tony looked up at him, he felt something tighten in his heart, just a little bit. Those eyes were deep and soulful, but there was a spark in them that warned of something unwavering and fierce there.

He smiled, but Tony just looked away.

“He’s going to be your intern for the next month or so,” Howard’s voice broke through the little reverie Steve had fallen into, and he turned his head back to his boss in surprise, “you’ll teach him all about how things work here, and report back to me how he’s doing at the end of every week, alright?”

Steve shot a very small glance over to Nat and Bruce, who were both looking just as shocked as Steve. “But sir- I mean, sorry, this is just… are you sure you have the right person here? I’m not scheduled to take on any interns for another few days, and Tony wasn’t on the processing list-“

“I know he wasn’t, but I’m making it happen, okay?” Howard told him a little snappily, and Steve shut his mouth with a sharp click, knowing that arguing this would be a bad idea, “he needs some experience, so I’ve moved the other interns further back. I want you to teach him about how to work in this environment, and I want him to come out of this with the proper skills that someone like him is going to need for when he takes over Stark Industries.”

Steve gaped. That… seemed like quite a momentous task. And they’d moved back the other interns for this? Those poor guys would be heartbroken at that- Steve knew how difficult it was to even get something as simple as an internship here, because he’d been one of the first ones to try for it, way back when he’d first started out here. This seemed incredibly unfair.

But what exactly could he do? He couldn’t just refuse the company owner.

“I… sure,” he said with smile he hoped looked genuine, “it’d be my pleasure.”

Howard nodded once. “Good,” he said, stepping backward, “Tony will leave the office when you leave the office, he’ll keep the same hours as you, and do everything you ask. If he doesn’t, just let me know, and I will deal with him accordingly.” There was a sharp note to the last sentence he spoke, and Steve watched Tony tense up sullenly at the tone.

He nodded, trying to wrap his head what had just happened as Howard walked out of the office without another word, the doors shutting behind him with a poignant click, leaving the awkward silence within the room.

Tony folded his arms and stared at him unabashedly, something confrontational in his stare. Steve had seen that look in the mirror many times before; he could see from the get-go that this kid had an issue with authority. And Steve had seen some of the shit that the infamous Tony Stark pulled in the front-covers of all the trashy magazines.

Overall, this was not adding up to a good internship experience.

“Hi, Tony,” he said, sticking out his hand over the desk in greeting, “I’m Steve. Looks like we’re going to be getting to know eachother pretty well over the next few weeks. It’s nice to meet you.”

Tony just looked at Steve’s outstretched hand for a moment, and Steve wondered whether he was even going to take it. But then, thankfully, he did, shaking it firmly and still staring Steve right in the eye.

“I do not want to be here,” he declared to the room after a short moment of silence, that spark in his eye flashing dangerously, “I would like that to be known, right here, right now. There is no part of me that wants to be spending any time here, with you, at all. I was coerced into this, and I am not going to be pleasant to be around for the next month. Are we clear on that? I don’t want any of us to go into this with false expectations.”

Steve froze, his hand still shaking Tony’s, completely thrown. How… how the fuck was he supposed to even respond to that? All the other interns he’d taken on previously had been some of the most polite people he’d ever met. And now- now this? What?

Tony pulled away, leaving Steve still staring at him in surprise. He smiled sweetly. “I’m going to find a coffee machine, and then make something very very black that will hopefully cure my fuck-awful hangover. Seeing as it is now essentially my job to be your slave for a month, I might as well ask- does anyone else want one?”

The room was still in a shocked silence, before Natasha spoke up, her voice sharp. “2/3 caff triple ristretto affogato venti, 2 pump mango 1 pump classic, 2%, mango to the second line, 3 scoops protein, 3 scoops berries, 2 scoop matcha, add banana, double blended, with whip, caramel drizzle, salted caramel topping, vanilla bean frappuccino.”

Tony turned to her, an eyebrow raised. “I don’t think they serve that kind of coffee on a tiny company-owned espresso machine.”

She smiled sweetly at him, and then reached and tucked ten dollars into the pocket of his shirt. “Starbucks is a fifteen-minute walk away. Chop chop.”

He glared at her for a second, before smoothing his face out into a picture-perfect smile. “Of course. One 2/3 caff triple ristretto affogato venti, 2 pump mango 1 pump classic, 2%, mango to the second line, 3 scoops protein, 3 scoops berries, 2 scoop matcha, add banana, double blended, with whip, caramel drizzle, salted caramel topping, vanilla bean Frappuccino coming right up.” He reeled off the list smoothly, which, Steve had to admit, was pretty impressive. He’d forgotten everything after ‘ristretto’.

Tony turned and shot that plastic smile over to Steve for a second, before turning on his heel and wandering out of the doors, pulling out his phone with his free hand and beginning to type lazily. Steve, Bruce and Natasha all watched him go, still somewhat dumbstruck.

“Well,” Bruce said after a moment, looking over to Steve, “that sounds like a lot of fun for you.”

“Yeah, Good luck with Little Prick Junior over there,” Natasha told him with a smirk, and Steve turned to both of them in bewilderment, raising his hands up to his head in despair.

This was going to be a fun,  _fun_  month.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

  

Tony spent the next few days being as much of an asshole as he could without pushing it too far.

At first, Steve hadn’t known quite what to do, which had actually kind of amused Tony, and only pushed him to behave worse. He mixed up paperwork ‘accidentally’ and got lost in the building more times than he could count. He pretended he hadn’t heard Steve when he spoke, and then went and did something entirely different to what Steve had asked under the pretence of ‘mishearing’. It was a dick move, and he  _knew_  it was a dick move, but hey- if Steve got angry enough, then maybe he’d just fire Tony and Howard would give up. The worst he’d get was a few smacks to the face, and then he could fuck off to Rhodey’s like he’d been planning.

Steve tried, and Tony could appreciate that, he really could- the guy always smiled at Tony when he came in in the mornings, even if it was a little tight and brittle, and would always start off the conversation politely. Then Tony would act like a dick, and Steve’s face would fall, and he’d end up snapping curt reply before sending Tony away to go find some stupid HR supervisor or paperwork or, on one particular occasion, just a note to his buddy ‘Buck’ on the 43rd floor that said nothing other than ‘God help me’.

Tony had actually laughed at that one. Kudos to Steve, he could be a funny guy when he wanted to be.

(He was also achingly attractive, but Tony was trying very hard not to focus on that part.)

Steve worked hard, Tony could see that from moment one. The thing is, though, is that sometimes Tony forgot how much that could stress people out. He’d been kind of sheltered for most of his life, and had never really interacted with anyone his age or even close to it. He’d been… well, he didn’t want to say  _lonely_ , but-

Yeah.

Anyway; his lack of experience in that field had meant that he’d just sort of taken his own experiences as gospel and run with that. He never really found himself stressed by big workloads, and could multitask them efficiently enough, and so he’d sort of assumed everyone else could, too.

That was the wrong way to think. That was a stupid way of thinking.

 

Sauntering into Steve’s office ten minutes late as usual, and with a black coffee in his hand, Tony shot the man a sweet smile and then sat down on the swivelly chair that Steve had put up for him on the other side of the desk. He leaned back, slurping on his cup and hitching feet up- before they could even land on the surface, however, Steve raised a finger without looking up from the paperwork he was filling out.

“Do not put your shoes on the desk, Tony.”

Tony sighed. “I wasn’t  _going_  to, actually,” he said, straightening them out, “I was just….stretching.” To prove his point, he arched off the chair and then flung his arms out behind his back, yawning loudly.

Steve was tense in front of him, and didn’t say anything. Tony just raised his eyebrows and then chucked his empty cup into the garbage on the other side of the room. Then he sat forward, tapping his fingers on the desk expectantly. “So what riveting skill am I going to be learning today then, Steven?”

The man sighed, before dropping his pen. Tony noticed he looked tired, and was almost about to ask whether Steve had gotten a lot of sleep before realizing that he was trying to be an asshole who got himself kicked out, and that’s not what assholes did.

“There’s someone who’s filed a complaint about a member of staff down on the second floor,” Steve told him, pushing a sheet his way, “I need you to evaluate that, and then give me your opinion on it. I’ll tell you whether it’s correct or not. After that, I’m gonna teach you how to fill out a Health and Safety report on a new piece of equipment that I’ve approved.”

Tony folded his arms and stared at Steve in despair. This was… so far from how he wanted to spend his time. The worst part about all this is that Howard hadn’t even had the decency to put him anywhere in the company where Tony would actually enjoy himself or be even slightly useful. He’d just thrust him off to the first person available, which… yeah, okay, Tony had been dealing with that same thing for eighteen years now, but it didn’t make it sting any less.

So rather than working toward his masters or spending time with the one friend he’d actually managed to acquire, he was here. And he appreciated that Steve was trying for him, he really did, but he didn’t  _want_  Steve to try- he wanted Steve to just give up and goddamn fire him aready-

“Tony?” He looked up and saw Steve watching him, “did you hear what I just said?”

“Possibly,” he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, “but people tend to have to repeat things I don’t care about so that it sinks into my brain.”

Steve’s jaw visibly clenched as he held back whatever retort was on his tongue. Steve, like every other employee at Stark Industries, was absolutely terrified of Howard, which was currently what was holding him back from snapping at Tony, because he was under some illusion that Howard gave a single shit about how Tony was treated- but he figured it would only be a matter of time until Steve just said fuck it and started screaming anyway, his father be damned. “I asked you to go fetch the printwork from downstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony nodded pleasantly, before pulling out his phone and then beginning to text Rhodey.

Steve wrote for a few more seconds, before he glanced up and realized Tony hadn’t moved. Tony heard the breath of air, could almost feel the irritation radiating off the other man. “Now, Tony.”

In response, he raised a finger, “well I’ve started texting now, so you’re gonna have to give me a min-“

“I DON’T  _HAVE_  A GOD DAMN MINUTE, TONY, JESUS CHRIST, FOR ONCE CAN YOU PLEASE JUST CONSIDER SOMEONE ELSE!”

Tony jumped, looking up at Steve, who had suddenly stood up against the desk and was glowering at Tony over it. Before he could even open his mouth and respond, however, Steve was raising a finger and silencing him.

Boom. Detonation day.

“You think I want you here either, Tony?  _Christ_ , I’ve got so much on my plate as it is- HR wants my evaluation in by Tuesday, and before that I’ve got to find a way of rescheduling all the interns that you messed up by just sauntering in here and getting given it on a silver goddamn platter. And every time you waste an hour trying to find something, or mix up the paperwork, I spend that hour after work sorting out all your bullshit! It’s not  _fair_ \- I don’t want to get sacked from the job I’ve worked so hard for simply because I couldn’t keep control of some stupid fuckin’ manchild who doesn’t know how to act in a workplace and has quite clearly never worked a day in his life, but I have to, otherwise Howard Fuckin’ Stark is gonna lose his shit with me, so I just have to sit there and watch you ruin everything for me and there ain’t a goddamn thing I can do about it!”

Steve took a long breath, and then visibly relaxed himself before leaning a little further across the desk, getting right in Tony’s face, and for a moment Tony lost sight of the professional businessman ten years too young for his job, and could only see a confrontational spitfire with raging blue eyes and a viciously sharp jaw that gave room for absolutely zero argument.

“So maybe, just maybe, can you fuckin’ think of someone other than yourself for a month, tops, and I swear to Christ, I will give you the most glowing report Mr Stark has ever seen, and then we can both fuck off our separate ways and you’ll never have to come here ever again. Does that sound like a good deal to you, Stark, or would you perhaps like me to go to daddy dearest with a long list of everything you’ve done in the past few days and then say that you’re an utterly hopeless case whom I would not employ if you were the last man on earth?”

Tony blinked up at him, and Steve glared back, completely unwavering.

Wow. Okay then.

Tony should definitely not find that as attractive as he did.

And he also shouldn’t feel quite so terrible about it all either. This was supposed to have been what he was aiming for. He wanted Steve to blow his top and kick him out. This had been the plan.

So why did he now feel horribly guilty?

Steve sighed suddenly, and then dropped back into his chair, holding his head in his hands. The fight seemed to have left him suddenly. “Oh Jheeze,” he muttered, “please don’t tell your father I said all that. I didn’t… I’m just under a lot of stress lately, and there’s so much to be done and you’re really, you’re  _really_  making that difficult for me, okay, but I don’t wanna get fired, really I-“

“I hate Howard,” Tony blurted, still rather struck dumb by the sudden outburst. It genuinely hadn’t occurred to him that his screwing around had made Steve’s life quite as difficult as he was saying it had. He’d thought at most, it would be an irritation. Getting lost on the way to the 2nd hadn’t seemed like a particularly detrimental move to make, but… well, then again, Steve was right: Tony hadn’t ever worked in an official office like this before. He guessed he didn’t really know how all this shit actually worked. “I’m not gonna tell him shit. Like, ever. We don’t talk. So. You’re- uh- you’re good.”

Steve froze, before looking back up from his hands and over to Tony. “Oh,” he said, swallowing, “oh, okay, well that’s… alright.”

There was an awkward silence, both of them just looking at one another warily. It was only when Steve next opened his mouth that Tony suddenly found words, as he blurted: “I’ll go and get your printwork now,” and then stood up jerkily, unsure of what exactly he was doing.

He felt like an asshole. Which, y’know, is what he’d been going for. But Steve’s posture just screamed defeat, and damn, Tony hadn’t meant to  _kill_  the guy, just piss him off enough to get himself kicked out.

“You don’t have to,” Steve sighed, standing up again, “I actually need it here within the next few minutes, in the order it was printed, so I’ll just go and get it-“

“No, seriously, uh- sit down,” Tony said, holding up a hand and then backing up, heading to the door, “I’ll be quick. Pinkie promise. Just… get on with what you were doing, Steve, I’ll be back for you in a minute.” And before Steve could even argue, Tony turned tail and then walked out of the door, not looking back Steve’s way.

Wow. Okay. So… Tony was a dick, then. Not that he wasn’t already aware of that, but this… yeah, this was some pretty A* Asshole behaviour. Shit. He’d thought Steve would kick him out simply for being a useless disaster, not for actually going and making Steve’s life harder than it already appeared to be. Although, now he said it in his head, he realised how utterly stupid that sounded. He wondered how many hours Steve must have been working overtime to sort out Tony’s shit?

Damn. Well- Tony really was a tool, huh? Poor guy. Howard had just walked in and thrust Tony on him, without any forewarning or guidance, and Steve was too afraid of being fired to say no.

The doors shut quietly, and Tony hurried off in the direction of the printing room, feeling an annoyingly heavy weight in his stomach. God, feeling guilty about all this wasn’t going to make any of it any easier- he wanted to just get out of here already, visit Rhodey like he’d planned. Except now- now he had this on his goddamned conscience, making everything ten times more difficult. He really needed to make this up to poor Steve. What would a guy like Steve Rogers even want? Flowers? Chocolates? A holiday to Milan? Tony could probably arrange that.

But no. He knew that Steve wouldn’t really want something like that. The guy was all principals and goodwill- if Tony wanted to make it up to him, he’d actually have to help.

Which meant staying around for a little longer.

“Ugh,” he sighed dramatically to himself as he pulled out all the paperwork from the printer and shuffled it into order. He really wished he was as heartless as Howard sometimes.

Wait. No. He was gonna take that back, he really  _really_  fucking hoped he never turned out like that.

Plodding back toward the elevator with the paperwork in one hand, he pulled out his phone and shot off a glum text to Rhodey, cursing this whole situation for the billionth time as he did so.

_Sorry Platypus. Looks like I might be sticking around here for a little while longer._

 

When he knocked on Steve’s door two minutes later and then heard Steve’s curt ‘come in’, he quickly pocketed his phone and then slid through the doors, waving the paperwork in the air. “Look, see, in order and everything,” he said cheerily, whilst Steve just blinked at him in confusion.

“Tony,” he said, “you knocked.”

For God’s sake. He probably had a lot of work to do here. “Yep,” he nodded and walked forward, plopping the papers down on Steve’s desk. “Hey, uh… look, I think I should probably explain some things to you about why I’ve been being such a tremendously large asshole these past few days.”

Steve just sighed, leaning back on his chair. “I don’t want to hear it, Tony, honestly, you should just g-“

“No, wait, look, my Dad’s a fucking dick, alright, sorry if you admire him or whatever but I had plans this summer with my best friend, and I’d been looking forward to said plans for like, 8 months okay, but then the day before I show up here, father dearest sees me locking lips with a guy on the front cover of a newspaper and decides he needs to make me knuckle down a bit. So he drags me over here, in a part of the company that- no offence- I couldn’t give less of a shit about and has nothing to do with the engineering that I actually want to pursue, and says if I don’t attend then he’s gonna pull me out of MIT.” Tony took a breath, looking at Steve’s face to see what the reaction was.

The man was just staring unblinkingly, face slack with confusion, so Tony pushed along anyway. “But I thought, you know- maybe if I attended, but just got fired, then Howard would give up, right? The most he’d do was… but anyway, yeah, that’s why I was being a dick. I wanted you to throw me out. So.” He swallowed, trying to push out the word that he wanted to say. “Uh. I am…sorry. I was a bitch. I didn’t know it was making your life quite as difficult as it was. I’m a little shit when I want to be. Shouldn’t have dragged you into it as well. My bad.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said, putting his pencil down, “well you’re fired, then.”

This time it was Tony’s turn to blink in confusion. Steve saw the look on his face, and then just sighed yet again. “Tony, you don’t want to be here, I don’t want you to be here, so let’s just do what you’ve been after this whole time-“

“No,” Tony shook his head and sat down on the chair in front of Steve, hands out on the desk, “look, I wanna make it up to you. I’ll stay another week. Actually do what I’m supposed to. I know I haven’t acted much like it, but I promise I’m smart. I can multitask well.” Tony ran a hand through his hair and gnashed his teeth. “I just… I feel like a tool. I really didn’t want to make your life more stressful, I just wanted to be a dick and get myself thrown out quick. But I figure I owe you this, yeah?” Tony put his hands together and gave Steve his best puppy-dog eyes. “Come on, Steve. Rhodey says I grow on people. Like mould. But useful mould. The mould that helped discover penicillin, that sort of m-“

“Okay, just stop talking now, Tony,” Steve waved a tired hand through the air and then watched Tony analytically for a few moments, until eventually nodding his head once. “Fine,” he said, “another week. But I swear to Christ, Tony, if you fuck around-“

“I will be an angel,” Tony said solemnly, standing back onto his feet and then picking up the finished form from under Steve’s hands, “and I will start by taking this down to Miss Hill immediately. I will even smile and be my most polite self.” To emphasize this, he shot Steve his best and realest smile, which seemed to momentarily throw Steve for a loop, because he watched as the other man stared at him and then swallowed rapidly.

“Make me a coffee whilst you’re at it,” Steve called out after him, eventually getting his voice back just as Tony was sauntering out off the door. “Black. Very… very black. Please. Thank you.”

Tony grinned, nodding and giving him a thumbs up. Steve looked rather windswept as Tony trundled out of the room, and he couldn’t help but feel that, although he had promised that he wasn’t going to actively attempt to ruin Steve’s career any more, he was still going to be able to have a lot of fun messing with the guy.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Steve had no idea what to make of Tony Stark.

 

He’d started out the first five days of the internship being the biggest prick known to man. He’d been unhelpful, uncaring, blatantly disrespectful and quite clearly unwilling in everything that he did. Every time Steve had tried to get him to complete a simple task, he’d had to refrain from just punching the asshole like 90% of his brain told him to. It was only the 10% professional businessman side of Steve that convinced him that would be a tremendously terrible idea, and would not only end with an enraged father asking him why Steve had assaulted his son, but also a possible court case which Steve would really like to not have to deal with.

But then, as soon as Steve had finally snapped and started screaming at him, it seemed as if Tony had just gone and done a complete 180. Running errands for Steve- and actually doing them efficiently. Filling out all the paperwork that had been taking up Steve’s time. He’d even offered to help fix Sam’s computer down on 43rd, which should really have been a job for the tech support.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony had waved off Steve’s objection casually, “technology is what I’m good with. I’ll ger her working in no time.”

And surprisingly, Tony actually  _had_. Steve had gone down to check on him ten minutes later, only to find the computer working perfectly, and Tony in mid-conversation with Sam, Bruce and Natasha. They were all laughing easily, like they’d been friends for weeks. Which was certainly weird. Tony had refused to even hold eye contact with any of them before this

“I like him,” Bucky declared that night, as they were all sat in their apartment watching The Office, “he’s an asshole. But like… in a cool way.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sam agreed, sipping on his beer, “he fixed my computer and didn’t even glare at me  _once_ , not like Sitwell usually does.”

“What about all the other times before this, when all he ever did was glare?” Steve muttered sullenly, as he loosened his tie. He’d been in the office until 8 that night- although he did have to admit, it would have been much later if it hadn’t been for Tony helping him with the file sorting. “I’m still not sure about him. He seems slippery.”

“He’s Howard Stark’s son, of course he’s gonna be slippery, his old man probably taught him that before he could walk,” Bucky said, “how old is the kid anyway?”

“18,” Steve responded quickly- not that he’d checked or anything, just… he’d been curious, that’s all.

Sam raised an eyebrow and turned to Bucky. “Legal then,” he said, and Steve quickly threw a pillow at him when both of them turned to him and laughed.

“Don’t deny it Stevie,” Bucky grabbed his shoulder and tugged him in, ruffling his hair, “we can all see the way you stare at him when he ain’t lookin’. If you weren’t so professional you’da hit that the day you saw him.”

“Shut up, punk,” Steve shoved him away and turned, trying to hide his revealing blush. “He was an asshole until about 70 hours ago anyway. And he’s Howard Stark’s fuckin’ son. Can you imagine the sorta shit I’d be in?”

Bucky just tsked, but Sam shrugged in defeat. “I guess we don’t even know whether he’s into guys either. Shame. You’d have been cute togeth-“

“Actually,” Steve cleared his throat and picked nervously at the label of his beer, “he, uh- I think the whole reason Howard made him take the internship was because, uh, Tony was caught kissin’ another guy? Or something? So.”

Sam and Bucky looked to one another for a second, before both of them turned to Steve rapidly.

“ask him out.”

“Date him.”

“Marry him.”

“Imagine being married to the fuckin’ heir of Stark Industries,” Bucky rubbed his hands, “you’d be like, rich as all fuck, dude. And I want 10 percent of whatever the figure is.”

Steve huffed, and shoved Bucky off the couch easily. “You know I don’t care about that, asshole,” he told his friend, “I care about whether he’s gonna be a shithead or not. And right now it’s fifty fifty. Anyway-“ he shrugged and turned back to the TV, feigning nonchalance, “I don’t even like him.”

Which was a total lie. But still. Steve was remarkably good at thinking with his head as opposed to his dick, and everything in his head was telling him that even entertaining the thought would be a terrible idea.

Sam and Bucky both snorted at that, because unfortunately, they knew Steve too well. “If you wanna pretend as if you don’t like him,” Bucky started, raising the beer to his lips and taking a swig,

“-then stop staring at his ass,” Sam finished wisely, patting Steve on the shoulder.

Steve spluttered, and then turned it into a scowl as his friends just burst into laughter around him. Fucking assholes. Steve barely even knew Tony- and yeah, he had a cute smile and amazing eyes and an ass to die for, but he was Howard Stark’s goddamn  _son_. And Steve was still on the fence as to whether he was even a nice person or just doing all this for the sake of his own agendas.

“Shut up,” he muttered, curling in on himself and pouting, “he’ll be gone by the end of the week anyway.”

That did not disappoint him.

At all.

 

*

 

By the end of the next day, however, he had decided he’d changed his mind.

“God, Tony, you’re a fuckin’ lifesaver,” Steve breathed out a sigh of relief as Tony managed to boot his computer back to life after it had suddenly shut down on him in the middle of one of the busiest orders of the entire month, “I’d have literally cried if you weren’t here to save my ass. Thank you.”

Tony shrugged, a small, pleased little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “No problemo, Steven,” he patted Steve lightly on the shoulder before frowning at the screen in front of both of them, and then swooping down a moment later, coming up behind Steve and putting his face about an inch away from Steve’s own. Had Steve twitched, his shoulder would’ve touched Tony’s chin. Not that he was thinking about that sort of thing. “Wait- did your files save, or were they deleted when it crashed?”

Steve’s heart sank, and he heard himself groan. Oh God. That was going to take hours to-

“Don’t worry,” Tony turned his head to look at him, and whoah, okay, they were close now- “I’ve got this. I can get them back, calm your pretty head.”

Steve blinked, and then nodded simply, turning his head back to the screen with an air of pointedness.  _Howard Stark’s son. Howard Stark’s son. Howard Stark’s son_.

It only took a few minutes of Tony fiddling with the laptop for all of Steve’s files to come back to their original beauty, and he breathed a huge sigh of relief when he saw the tabs pop back up onto the screen. And when Tony smiled, Steve’s own one grew double the size. The guy really did have a wonderful smile.

“You know,” Tony said when he straightened up, “you don’t have to look quite so surprised when I do cool stuff. I know we didn’t get off to a great start, but I’m not actually a full-blown asshole. Mostly.” He winked and then backed away over to his side of the desk once more, before sitting in his spot and shuffling a pile of papers. “God this shit is boring. I don’t even know why you’d want to do this.”

Steve grimaced. “It’s not always this bad, and usually there’s a bit more to it. It’s just because this is the busiest time of the summer, so-“ he gestured wearily to the papers around him, “that’s why we usually hire the interns around this time. They tend to get loaded off with all the paperwork.”

Tony smiled brilliantly, and then leaned back on his chair and rested his feet on the desk. “And what a relief it is to have me.”

“Feet. Off the desk. Now.”

Tony pulled a face, but slipped them off with a pout. Steve just rolled his eyes and shook his head, continuing onward. “Yes, Tony, that is exactly what I thought when you first walked into the office. How much of a godsend you were- this kid who had no training, didn’t want to be here and pushed in the queue of ten other applicants who now can’t be scheduled until October, which, seeing as you’re going to be gone in three days, means I’m gonna be down a helper.”

Tony paused for a moment, and then blinked. “I’m not a kid,” he said, “I’m eighteen.”

Steve just sighed, smiling wearily, but said nothing. He could admit, his temper was a little thin today- he’d been in since 6, and it seemed as if everything was just going wrong already. Julie down in tech had just been fired for stealing, and she’d been one of the most efficient workers there, which sucked. And then the printer had gone on the fritz, and Tony had been too caught up with Steve’s paperwork to go and sort it out, meaning they’d had to leave it to tech support, which had taken an extra twenty minutes. And of course, now Steve was thinking about when Tony was going to just fuck off over to his buddy’s house in New Jersey and leave Steve without any help for the next month in which he would usually have had his usual round of interns.

Yeah. Still kinda bitter about that part. It was going to be a long few weeks, that was for fucking sure.

He looked up, and saw that Tony was struggling to come back from the blunt truth of Steve’s words. He figured it had sort of been a little out of the blue, after all. So he just smiled, and then tossed Tony a ring-binder from underneath his desk. “Hey, can you order all those forms into alphabetical for me?”

“Steve, I really- uh, I didn’t mean to mess everyth-“

“It’s okay Tony,” Steve shook his head and twirled his pen absently, “you didn’t have a choice either. Just forget it.”

Tony was silent, and then Steve heard the sound of papers beginning to shuffle around on the desk. Tony somehow managed to make that sound seem almost subdued, and Steve really had no need to, but he felt a little guilty anyway. He hadn’t really meant to snap like that, and he didn’t want Tony to have to go back to how he’d been at the very beginning, that’d just be a nightm-

“Hey, so what does the alphabet start with again?”

Steve paused for a moment, trying to comprehend the question being asked of him. Then he cracked his head up, looking at Tony as if he’d grown a second head.

The other man was looking at him innocently, like the question had been perfectly normal. Steve was just about to ask if he was being serious when suddenly Tony’s face broke out into one of those beautiful smiles again, with enough force to light up Steve’s whole office.

Steve rolled his eyes and kicked Tony playfully under the table, whilst Tony just giggled quietly to himself. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone, Rogers.”

Steve glanced up, looking at the crown of Tony’s hair as he leaned down and worked on the files. “You know what,” he declared defeatedly, “I probably will.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

On the last day of his internship, Tony was actually feeling kind of glum.

He wasn’t even particularly sure why. He was supposed to be happy about this- getting himself ‘fired’ was exactly what he’d wanted, right? And by tonight he’d be with Rhodey, drinking beers and shit-talking Tony’s old man for attempting to stop them from getting together. It was going to be fun.

But what if Howard didn’t even let him go? What if he just got mad and then pulled Tony from MIT because he’d failed to do the simplest of tasks? What would Tony have ended up achieving, exactly?

And he knew it wasn’t like him to ever shy away from something risky- but there was also the matter of the section of the office he was interning for, and how… well, how he didn’t actually want to leave. Not  _right now_ , anyway; he couldn’t deny that office jobs were boring, and he honestly had no idea why anyone put up with them, but at the same time…

The guys were funny. And nice to him. Natasha had smacked him around the head and made him go fetch ridiculously complex coffee orders a few times as punishment, but after that even she’d warmed up to him. Bucky called him a little punk and ruffled his hair up, no matter how many times Tony complained that it ruined his look. Sam called him Whiz Kid, a name that many of the other workers on the floor had taken up as well (even though Tony was only around three or four years younger than all of them, thank you very much). They were all… well, they were all just really cool.

And then Steve. Steve, with his perfect hair that ended up in tufts by the end of the day from where he’d grabbed it, and bright red lips from where he habitually bit on them. With the tight smiles that turned more relaxed when Tony managed to coax one out of him, who was way too stressed for a guy his age, but still treated everyone with the utmost of politeness. Even Tony, when he’d been a complete dick.

People like Steve were the ones you thought were too good to be true, and Tony could admit, he had more than a little bit of a crush on the guy. Could you really blame him, though? Goddamn it, when Steve stretched, Tony could see the outlines of his abs through the white of his shirt. How did anyone even  _get_  that ripped?

Hanging out in SI had gone from being something Tony dreaded to something that… well, something he actually sort of enjoyed. Not to mention the fact that Steve and co. desperately needed his help, and seeing as Howard marching in and declaring Tony part of the workings had messed up all the interning schedules for the next few weeks, when Tony finally left, he was going to be leaving Steve with the mess to clean up. Which was kinda douchey, really.

“You need me to do anything?” He asked Steve as he hurried into the room with his tie still hanging off his neck. He’d had to come into work later so that he could sort out a bunch of paperwork he’d started whilst in his apartment, and so his whole appearance seemed rather haphazard. Tony wordlessly handed the man his black coffee, and Steve muttered his thanks as he grabbed it and then poured it straight down his throat.

Tony just watched, rather fascinated as Steve methodically drained the cup of all its contents, before slamming it down on the desk and looking back to Tony with pained eyes. “Yes,” he said hoarsely, “kill me please. Swift blow to the head should do the trick.”

Tony pulled a face. “I don’t think that’s in my requirements as an intern, Steve.”

“I will give you anything you want.”

_Don’t say blow me, don’t say blow me, don’t say blow me,_  “Isn’t that emotional manipulation? I’m not sure that’s appropriate in the work place.”

Steve just sighed deeply, and then flopped into his desk chair with a desolate look on his face. Tony turned to face him and leaned forward, patting his head consolingly. “I take it the meeting didn’t go too well last night then?”

“The meeting went fabulously, actually,” Steve corrected, although he didn’t sound particularly pleased about that, “so much so that they want to meet up again, tomorrow, to discuss a business deal between corporations.”

Tony frowned. “But don’t you have the meeting with the swiss people-“

“Yep.”

“And then the manager’s briefing-“

“Also yes.”

“And-“

“And the staff training afternoon, and then sensitivity training for an hour in the morning, yes, I am aware,” Steve finished for Tony, before sinking in to the desk and shutting his eyes. Tony watched him as he slumped like an exhausted golden retriever, cheek smushed into his hand and lip stuck in a pout that made Tony feel things he should not feel for his boss.

He looked absolutely exhausted.

“I’m sure it won’t be so bad,” Tony hedged, “and I mean, I’ll be around to h-“

“No, you won’t,” Steve corrected without opening his eyes, and Tony stopped as he realized that yeah, shit, Steve was right. He wasn’t going to be around. Today was Friday. Today was his last day.

“You need to tell me how you want me to spin it to Howard,” Steve continued from his position slumped over the desk, “I don’t really want to be thought of as a boss who can’t control his staff, but I don’t wanna paint you like some delinquent either- even if you were at the start. So what exactly do you want me t-“

“I can stay for as long as you need me,” Tony blurted out the words before his brain could catch up with his big mouth. He hadn’t even thought it through at all; they’d just spurted out of his throat like a reflex action, responding to Steve’s stress. Because Tony could help alleviate said stress, and then Steve might smile. And Lizard Brain Tony Like Big Buff Steve Happy Smile.

Oh God. He’d just thrown away his entire free summer because he couldn’t stop thinking with his dick.

“Are you serious?” Steve asked, a wonderful sort of hope igniting in his eyes as he sat up straighter, and oh, God, Tony couldn’t back out  _now_ , not when Steve was looking at him like that, “because that would be… jheeze, I’m not gonna lie Tony, that would be brilliant.”

Tony opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish, brain working a mile a minute. He could take it back, say no, he had places to be… but then Steve would have to deal with all of this mess on his own, and it would be Tony’s fault, whether inadvertently or not. Tony didn’t want to foist all that on Steve- this had been a feud between him and Howard, not Steve and Howard, but it would be Steve who ended up paying the price for it.

God fucking dammit.

“Yeah, sure,” Tony said with a smile, whilst mentally braining himself against a wall, “until this busy surge is over, I could help out. Rhodey will understand, I’m sure. All we were really gonna do is eat Cheetos and build robots.”  _God,_  that sounded amazing right about now. Why was he not out the door already?   
Oh yeah- because Steve had a smile that melted Tony’s brain and abs he could probably cut himself on, they were that sharp.

“Tony, that… shit, you’ve really saved my ass, you know that?” Steve sat straight, suddenly looking a lot more cheerful as he gave Tony his best beam, “I thought I was gonna have to ask for a few extensions, but if you’re here then I think I’m gonna be okay!” The man jumped to his feet from the desk, grabbing a stack of paperwork as he began to walk back around the desk and over toward the door. He stopped when he got to Tony’s side and then dropped a hand onto his shoulder, squeezing gently.

When Tony looked up at him, Steve’s face shone with gratitude. “Seriously. Thank you, Tony,” he said softly, before his hand slipped off and he began to walk off in the direction of the door once more. “Okay, I’m gonna go and give these to Thor. Can you get started on the forms over in the corner?”

And then he was out of the door, gone in a huff of smoke and crinkle of paperwork. Tony sat and looked at the space Steve had just left, trying not to think about how good Steve’s hand had felt against his shoulder, thumb just brushing up against the bare skin of his neck.

Oh god. Rhodey was gonna kill him.

 

*

 

“So,” Tony looked up from Steve’s desk, at which he was filling out various forms that the man had left for him, and saw Natasha’s raised eyebrows looking back at him pointedly, “Little Prick Junior is sticking around, huh?”

Tony huffed, dropping his pen and leaning back on his chair, looking up at Natasha as if he owned the office. “I’m a good Samaritan,” he shrugged and then pressed his fingertips together, “it’s in my nature to help those less fortunate than me, what can I say?”

She laughed, hopping up onto the desk and then shuffling until she was comfortable- an act she would never have done had Steve been in the office. He was very picky about the body parts that were allowed on his precious work surfaces. “Yes, sure, the asshole who deliberately got the radio stuck on playing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley at full volume all day is  _such_  a kind-hearted soul.”

“Hey, I thought we agreed to cancel the first few days. We erased those days from history, remember?”

“No,” Natasha tapped a manicured finger against his forehead, “ _Steve_  agreed to erase those days from history, because you pulled your puppy-dog eyes and just so happened to be wearing tight pants that day.”

When Tony just looked at her in confusion, she rolled her eyes and flicked him in the ear. “You think he could take one look at your cute ass and not do whatever you asked him to do? Come on, Stark, the poor guy’s only human- not to mention severely smitten with you, although god knows why,” she shot him a look and then rolled her eyes, “cocky little bastard, in my opinion.”

Tony batted his eyelashes. “You love me, Romanov.”

“I barely even tolerate you, kid.”

“How many times do I have to goddamn remind you, I’m only three years younger than you,” Tony shoved off the desk with a pout, before turning back to her as her words finally sank in. “Wait- what did you just say?”

Natasha looked innocently at him. “That you’re a baby?”

“I’m not a goddamn- okay, wait, never mind, no, I meant… before that,” he waved a hand and then shuffled his chair over to her, “about Steve. Being smitten. With me.”

Her eyebrow quirked again, and she flipped her hair casually. “And what about it?”

He blinked at her rapidly. “Uhhhh, well, what do you mean?”

Her stare was blank and unimpressed. “And this is why I dislike you, идиотский мальчик, you are a dense fool who cannot even see past his own button nose-“

“Are you saying Steve likes me?” Tony pressed urgently, his eyes widening as he grabbed her hands. She tutted and looked at the ceiling in despair, but when she looked back down at him, her eyes were soft.

“Idiot,” she muttered, “of course he likes you. He can hardly keep his eyes off you, do you not see him? The only reason he didn’t fire you the moment you started fucking around was because he was so goddamn caught up in staring at your ass as you stormed out of his office. Probably.” She tugged her hands away from his and then picked up the forms that he’d been working on with fluid efficiency, a small smile pulling on her dark lips. “Anyway, Steve doesn’t like workplace gossip, and he'll be back soon, so I should go.”

“No, wait, hold on, how many people know about this? When did you find out? Are you fucking with m-“

Tony continued to ask his litany of questions, which Natasha steadily ignored until the door closed behind her with a gentle snick, leaving him alone in the office with a rather stunned look on his face and a pile of fresh paperwork which he hadn’t even noticed her leaving.

He frowned a little at the stack, and then sighed. She was most likely just messing with him, because she could tell how much Tony was crushing on the guy and wanted to mess around. She was a demon, he was sure of it. There wasn’t any depth to her words- Steve was a bigshot business guy who was dedicated to his work, Tony was 90% sure he didn’t even glance twice at stupid interns with big mouths and authority issues.

Fuck. Fuck Natasha for making him believe that, even if it was just for a second. She was a witch.

He huffed irritably and pulled the next stack toward him, beginning to get started on it. A couple of minutes in, however, he heard the sound of the door opening once more, and this time it was Steve’s unmistakable heavy-setted feet that pressed against the wooden floorboards.

Tony turned the swivelly chair around and faced him, an eyebrow raised in question at Steve’s pleased-looking face.

“Can you do something for me?” Steve asked, absently pulling off his jacket and then throwing it onto the coat-rack by the wall.

“Anything,” Tony said slowly, batting his eyelashes as he watched Steve roll the sleeves of his shirt up, which, wow, hot.

Steve paused briefly, apparently caught short by the suggestiveness of Tony’s tone. He always loved flirting with Steve; the poor man never knew what the hell to do. In the end, he just rolled his eyes and shot Tony a dry look. “I need you to come with me down to the basement levels. I wanna introduce you to someone.”

Tony mentally went through the floorplan, before creasing his brow into a frown. “That’s-“

“R & D, yeah, I know, not technically my field, but I got a friend,” Steve shrugged and then smiled down at him, jerking his head, “he wants to meet you. I told him you were a whiz with robots, and he’s curious.”

Tony stood up from his chair, cocking his head up at Steve as he passed the man, “you talk about me to your friends?” He asked sweetly, spinning on his heel and walking backward so that he was still facing the other man.

Steve gave him another dry look. “You don’t think everyone wanted to know who the random asshole kid was who kept messing up the paperwork routines of the entire building?”

“I’m not a goddamn  _kid_ , I am  _eighteen_ , an  _adult_ -“

“Get out the door, Tony,” Steve rolled his eyes and stepped forward, giving Tony a gentle shove in the chest with the tips of his fingers and sending him stumbling out into the corridor. He pouted, unamused at Steve, but the guy just laughed and then wandered over to the elevator.

Tony should just have left him to his own devices. So much for  _gratitude_ , damn.

The R & D Floor took a good few minutes to get to, in which Tony passed the time by gently teasing Steve about his choice in tie and then getting ribbed for his own state of bedhead in return- but when Tony stepped foot onto the main floor once the elevator finally arrived, he felt his eyes light up automatically.

Now this-  _this_  was his type of workplace.

People mingled around on the open-plan space in front of them, all in various lab coats or safety gear. Tony caught handfuls of conversations about hyperdynamics and friction-charges and nanobots, and see,  _this_  was the sort of workplace jargon that he could actually understand. This was the stuff that made sense.

He turned, watching as a drone flew over his head carrying a box of pizza over to a group of youngish scientists in the far corner of the room, which Tony was now realizing appeared to be a sort of recreational zone. Steve confirmed this when he stepped up to Tony’s side and checked his watch, before muttering “yeah, they’ll all be on lunch break now.”

He turned to Steve, eyes wide. “Seriously, how can you look at this and then want to go back up to your little office up there? Isn’t this like… heaven?”

Steve grinned. “The science guys are great, but their work ethic is very… different, to mine. And their general workplace is- uh- a lot. Hectic.” He shrugged, before leaning in a little further to Tony’s ear and whispering, “also I failed science and barely scraped a pass in math. So.”

Tony turned to him, eyes wide. “How the goddamn hell did you get into Stark Industries with a fail in the sciences? I thought the minimum entry was a B.”

Steve just winked and said nothing. “Do you really think I’d tell the bosses son that sort of incriminating evidence?” And then before Tony could even respond, he felt a hand push gently into his back. “Let’s keep walking, shall we?”

Tony opened his mouth, absolutely ready to push the subject, but before he could get out another word, he suddenly found himself face to face with another man. His hair was close cropped and flecked with strands of soft gray, and he wore a pair of wired spectacles on the bridge of his nose. His face was open and kind, and Tony felt himself warming to him instinctively.

“Hello,” the man said, extending a hand, “You must be Tony. I’m Yinsen! Steve’s told me a lot about you.”

“Ignore seventy percent of it,” Tony shook it gladly, cocking his head and analysing Yinsen quickly, “I was having a bad few days and they all took it very personally.”

At his side, Steve huffed and shook his head. Yinsen just raised an eyebrow. “He said you were smart as a whip and loved building robots and messing with his laptop- was that bit true? Because if it is, I’d like to show you around for a bit. We’re on lunch break  right now, so I’ve got time.”

Tony felt his eyes widen in pleasant surprise, and he turned quickly to Steve. “Would that be alright? You don’t need me for anything, do y-“

Steve was already shaking his head. “That’s why I brought you down here. Thought you’d enjoy it. Just don’t stay down here for the rest of the week, alright?” He turned to Yinsen and then nodded, a spark in his eye. “Watch him,” he waved at Tony, “he’s a handful.”

Tony scoffed, turning back to Yinsen and shaking his head. “Ignore him, he’s just fussy because I keep putting my feet on his desk.”

Steve began to walk backward, folding his arms stubbornly. “Desks are for working and paper, not feet! My mother taught me that, and I don’t intend to let her rules slack.” He turned on his heel and then waved, stepping back into the open elevator. “Don’t kill him, Yinsen, I’d hate to have to file out the paperwork for that.”

And then the doors shut and the elevator rose back up to the higher floors, leaving Tony in his literal candyland, with Yinsen as his guide.

The man turned to him and gave him a slightly amused look, before lifting his glasses higher up onto his nose. “So,” he began, gesturing around him, “where would you like to start?”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

The busiest sector of the summer was slowly winding down, and Steve was about ready to start crying with relief because of it. He and his team had been working pretty much nonstop for the past month, and they were all run ragged. If Tony hadn’t stuck around, Steve was pretty sure he would have had a nervous breakdown by now. Luckily, Steve’s intern had gone from rude and uncaring to one of the best damn workers Steve had ever had under his employ in the space of less than a week, and for that Steve was incredibly goddamn grateful.

Although that wasn’t to say the man couldn’t still be absolutely fucking infuriating when he wanted to be, of course.

“I’m telling you!” Tony yelled in the middle of the floor, hands flying all over the place as he glared across at Steve, “I am literally a genius, and I am goddamn telling you that you couldn’t just jump when the elevator hit the ground, that doesn’t cancel out the velocity you were travelling at seconds before!”

“Have you ever seen it happen?” Steve folded his arms and glared right back, before turning to Bucky, who was sat eating his lunchtime sandwich at his desk, “tell him, Buck, I’m right!”

Bucky blinked, and then swallowed down his lump of food. “Yeah, Steve’s right.”

“Do you even know what we’re talking about?” Tony turned on him so rapidly that Bucky had to lean back a little to avoid his flailing arms.

“Admittedly, no.”

“Hah!” Tony pointed a finger at Steve and marched forward, triumphant, “see, even Bucky can’t agree with you without having to literally ignore everything you said. I’m right! Jumping upward in a falling elevator would not save your life! For one thing, the metal surroundings would just concave in on you and crush your body immediately.”

“But what about if the metal was a hypothetical alloy that could withstand any impact?” Thor pondered as he braided his own hair and watched his phoneline blink repeatedly. “ _Then_  would jumping save you from being crushed to pieces?”

“Why are you freaks talking about getting crushed to pieces?” Sam wandered in with a pot of instant noodles, and then looked at Steve and Tony, facing off in the middle of the 43rd floor. “You know what, I don’t even wanna ask.”

“You really don’t,” Natasha piped up, shaking her head and not looking up from the doodles she was drawing out on what may well have been an important document. “This is just how they flirt. It’s like some sort of mating call thing.”

“Shut up, Nat,” Steve said, his cheeks going a little pink, “I’m just having a debate with Tony-“

“ _Debate_?” Tony threw his hands into the air, “There is no ‘debate’ to this, this is scientific fact, the speed at which you jump- say, three miles per hour- is the amount that you’ll take off your travelling speed, which could be up to seventy mph in a free-falling elevator! So great, Steve, you’d be going at a nice gentle 67 miles an hour instead-“

Tony ground to a halt when he felt a paper-ball hit him square in the mouth. When he looked back at Steve in surprise, he just held his hands up in a ‘what can you do’ gesture, looking the picture of smug. It felt rather satisfying to shut Tony up like that.

“Did you just throw that at me,” Tony said blankly.

“I don’t even regret it.”

Tony leaned down and fished it up, before plucking a handful of pens out of one of the baskets on Sam’s desk. “You’re going to,” he warned, before launching a pen over to Steve, who barely dodged it, but Tony wasn’t deterred. He appeared to have a lot of ammo stored in his hands.

“Run, Steve,” Natasha warned, “the baby is mad.”

With a laugh, Steve did just that, turning on his heel and sprinting out of the office floor, Tony hot on his heels and firing pens at him at every opportunity. Despite Steve’s best efforts at dodging the missiles, he felt a few of them hit the back of his head, although when he turned a corner he managed to temporarily shake Tony. He turned his head and watched as Tony almost ran headfirst into the wall, but managed to rebalance himself and then sprint right after Steve, down the corridor. As they both ran, various employees watched them both go with looks of confusion on their faces, wondering what the hell their manager Steve was doing hauling ass down the hall with his intern leaving a trail of pens in their wake as he launched them over in his direction. In that moment, though, Steve found it sort of hard to care. He was pretty sure the stress had sent him a little bit loopy.

“Stop, alright, I’m sorry!” He yelped and covered his head as Tony sprayed four pens at once in his direction.

“Not good enough!” Tony called out to him, beginning to catch up as Steve reached the T-junction of the corridor and slowed down. Steve knew that Tony was going to tackle him as soon as he got within touching distance, and at the speed the guy was going at, he would probably be successful.

However, at that point, Steve just so happened to turn his head to the left of the corridor. He thanked his lucky fucking stars that he did- because at that very moment, none other than Howard Stark walked out of the elevator at the end of the corridor, with a few members of staff at his side.

Steve froze in horror, thinking of the image they were going to end up bringing to life if Tony, who was further away and had not seen his father, ended up hauling all his pens across the corridor and then forcibly tackling Steve to the ground. Shit.

Before he even knew what he was doing, Steve met Tony in the middle, grabbing him by his slim waist and then hauling him off to the side, pushing him into a nearby store cupboard and shutting the door with a slam. Tony began to make a noise of protest, but Steve clamped a hand over his mouth, shaking his head and frantically pressing his finger up against his lips. Steve could only see Tony in the thin halflight that was coming from the cracks in the door, but he knew the man was thoroughly confused at the sudden turn of events.

Steve held his breath as he heard Howard round the corner, talking sharply to the two men at his side. Tony’s own eyes widened, and he breathed out in understanding against Steve’s hand.

“What the…” Howard’s unimpressed drawl carried into the store cupboard, and Steve shut his eyes and prayed that none of those men were going to take an impromptu look into the cupboard next to them. “What’s been going on here?”

“I- uh, I’m not sure, sir,” one of the men said, looking confused, “maybe someone dropped a delivery of pens?”

Tony glanced up at Steve, and God, it shouldn’t be funny- it was so far from funny, if Steve was caught out at this, he could get fucking  _fired_ \- but suddenly the desire to laugh was overwhelming. Steve pursed his lips and clenched his eyes shut, fighting back the urge and feeling Tony tense up against his hands, attempting to do the same.

“Hmmf,” Howard grunted, unimpressed as always, “well get the cleaners to clear this shit up, stat. I hate a messy workplace. Makes us look cheap.”

Steve hung his head and shook, barely even able to stop the snort of amusement that was building in his throat. In a last ditch attempt, he stifled his mouth in Tony’s shoulder without thinking about it, and a second later Tony did the same, laughing silently into Steve’s chest.

It was another twenty or so seconds before they heard Howard and Co. turn the corner and leave the corridor empty for them, and Steve sighed in relief, relaxing forward. “Oh Jesus Christ, do you know how fucked we would’ve been if they’d caught us being that childish?”

“Sorry for nearly getting you fired,” Tony whispered even though they didn’t need to be quiet any more- and that was when Steve realized quite how close he was to the other man now, pressed against one another in the darkened storecupboard.  
To anyone else who’d seen this, they’d have thought he and Tony were going in there to fuck.

_Uh oh. Don’t think about fucking when you’re pressed up against him, idiot._

He pulled his head away from Tony’s shoulder and blinked down at him, unsure of what to say. “Uhh. Don’t- uh- don’t worry about it.”

_And now he should open the door and step away. Open the door and step away. Do it right now._

But shit, Tony was looking up at him like… like-

It happened before Steve even had the chance to take a breath. One moment, he was staring down at Tony’s mouth and trying to remember how to inhale, and the next moment Tony had leaned forward and wrapped his hands around Steve’s neck.

And then they were kissing.

Tony tasted lemony, from the tea that Bruce had made for him earlier that morning, and Steve gasped in pleasant surprise, hands moving instinctively to cradle Tony’s elegant neck. He pushed forward and spun them, pressing Tony into the wall and then feeling it as the other man moaned quietly from the back of his throat and grabbed Steve by the collar of his shirt, pulling him further in.

Steve could feel his heart beating up in his damned throat, and when Tony rolled his hips up against Steve’s, he thought he was going to fucking explode right there. Tony was  _so so_ fucking gorgeous, Steve had seen that from day fucking one, but he’d never realized quite what a masterpiece Tony’s body was until it was right there, plastered up against his own.

“Jesus,” Tony gasped, hands dropping from Steve’s collar and downward, tugging his shirt out of his slacks efficiently, and shit,  _shit shit shit_ , this was a bad idea, Tony was his  _intern_ , there were probably about five million rules about this-

“Wait,” Steve said, pulling away quickly and before he could change his mind, “wait, Tony, we can’t… this isn’t right.”

Tony froze, looking up to him in confusion. “Huh?”

“You’re my intern,” Steve hissed, untangling Tony’s hands from his shirt and then hurriedly tucking it back into his belt, “I am… I am in a position of power, I don’t want to do this to you, this isn’t-“

“Hey, do I  _look_  like I’m being taken advantage of here?” Tony gestured incredulously to himself, which, yeah, okay, that was true- he certainly seemed like a willing volunteer. But that wasn’t the point. Fraternization rules were there for a goddamn reason; Steve had seen it fall apart far too many times, and it just made an absolute mess of everything.

“I’m sorry,” he shook his head and bit his lip, trying to pretend like he couldn’t still taste Tony there, “I should… I have to go and- yeah. Work and stuff. I. Uh. Sorry.”

Oh God, he’d fucked this up so bad. Tony was staring at him, a hurt look in his eyes, but he nodded and then stepped away, giving Steve as much room as he could in the cramped store room. “Alright,” he said quietly, “you go… do your work, then.”

Steve nodded, hand grasping blindly for the handle of the door and then stumbling out of the cupboard.

He didn’t look Tony in the eye as he practically ran for the elevator around the corner of the corridor.

 

*

 

“I fucked up.”

All kudos to her, Sharon didn’t even look up. Over the past month, she’d heard a lot of Steve’s crap- she was no longer fazed by any of it, and now she was the first person he tended to run to when things got difficult. The woman was wiser than any of them, and she didn’t take any of his shit. “Oh good,” she said blandly, “does that mean we’re going to be getting another order of reactor-grade plutonium instead of more copying paper?”

“No, I mean like… personal shit.”

_That_  made her stop what she was doing. She dropped the tablet she was working on and turned in her chair fully. “I’m sorry- Steve Rogers?  _Personal shit?_  Are we thinking of the same person h-“

“It’s about Tony. The intern.”

Her mouth clacked shut, but her eyes twinkled knowingly. “Ahh,” she said, nodding her head, “Tony the intern. I see. Makes things a little clearer. That asshole sure knows how to press your buttons.”

“He’s not an-“ Steve stopped himself, and then shrugged, “okay, maybe he is an asshole, but it’s not like that. I fucked up here, like I said. I… I kissed him.”

She actually looked downright shocked at that. “You kissed Tony the intern?”

“Yeah.”

“Tony the intern who’s  _Tony Stark,_  son of Howard Stark?”

“Yep.”

“Tony the intern, son of Howard Stark and the bastard who keeps stealing my fucking cookies and leaving stupid apology notes all over my desk?”

“Yeah- I mean, maybe, I don’t know about the cookie bit-“

Sharon rolled her eyes and then stared up at Steve, who was leaning awkwardly in the doorway and trying not to show how shaken up he actually was. Her face was fond as she gestured him forward. Steve loved Sharon; she was level-headed and calm, and her dry wit was enough to match even Natasha. He could always count on her.

“Steve,” she said seriously, “do you like Tony?”

He could feel himself blush, just at the mention of the words. “I… yeah,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair, “yeah, I do.”

“And Tony likes you?”

“Uhm, I think so. I mean. He leaned in first, I think.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So what’s the problem here?”

“He’s-“ Steve flailed his hands, thinking about Tony’s cocky smile and wild eyes, “he’s my  _intern_ , Sharon! The power dynamics are too fucked up, and I don’t feel comfortable dating someone I have control over. It just- it ain’t right.”

She frowned slightly, twirling a pen in her hands as she thought. Eventually she looked back to him with a cocked head. “How long is he interning for?”

Steve stopped, shutting his mouth with a clack. He… he hadn’t thought of that. “When the surge has ended. So- uh- two weeks, actually. His last day will be on the night of the office party.”

She looked at him slightly pityingly as he came to his own conclusions, and then patted the top of his hand as she picked up her tablet again. “Does that make things a little clearer?” She asked him, her smile fond.

As a matter of fact, it really did. Steve felt a little flicker of excitement and hope ignite back up inside him in response as he realized that actually, he may not have ruined everything after all.  He grinned and swooped down, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Sharon, you are so wise. I owe you a lot of flowers.”

“There’s a really nice apartment down in Long Island that I’ve got my eye on, if you really feel like treating me.”

Steve laughed as he backed out of the room. “Don’t love you that much, Carter,” he threw over his shoulder, waving to her as he turned the corner with a new bounce in his step.

Jheeze. How had he not thought about that? All he needed to do was wait a few weeks until Tony’s internship was over, and then he could do whatever he damn well pleased without feeling bad. That would be easy, right? Shit, Steve was good at overthinking everything. There was no reason why he couldn’t just get Tony’s number and then ask to meet up after Tony had finished working for him. Of course, before any of that, he’d need to go and find Tony and apologize for bailing so suddenly- but after that, then maybe they could work something out.

Checking his watch, he hitched a ride up the elevator and back to his office. It was 3, which meant that Tony was probably still going to be working at Steve’s desk. Sure enough, when Steve opened the doors and slipped in, the man was hunched with his back to Steve, methodically going through a stack of papers on his right.

Steve smiled on sight, but as soon as Tony became aware of him, he suddenly paused his filing and then cracked his head up, spinning around to face Steve. Before he could even get a word in, Tony was talking.

“Hey, look, so about earlier-“ Tony looked out of the window and then waved his hands through the air, “sorry. That was stupid of me, I just got overexcited. Dark closets and the threat of danger are a bad mix for me, you know how it is. Won’t happen again, promise.”

Steve’s good mood shrivelled up and died, right then and there.

What the  _hell_?

“Oh,” he said, licking his lips and tightening his jaw. “Oh, okay.”

It had been a mistake. Tony hadn’t even meant it. Jesus, and there Steve had been, planning out weeks ahead of himself like an idiot, and Tony hadn’t even been into it. That was… embarrassing.

Tony smiled tightly at him, before turning back to his paperwork and leaving Steve stood in the middle of the room with the metaphorical rug swept from right out underneath him.

“Right,” Steve nodded to himself and then sighed quietly, shutting his eyes. He made the decision then, that this day sucked. He was cancelling this day in particular. “I’ll just...” he waved to the door and began to step out, knowing that Tony hadn’t even turned around.

“Yeah, seeya,” Tony made a vague waving gesture with his hand, already immersed back into his work.

Steve slipped out quietly, cursing his foolishness.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as Steve was gone, Tony stopped his mindless writing and sighed deeply, head falling into the desk.

It was bad enough that Steve had decided half-way through their makeout session that Tony wasn’t worth the effort of it all and bailed, but Steve now couldn’t even be in the same room as Tony, it seemed. Despite Tony’s attempt to diffuse the situation a little, Steve had spent all of twenty seconds in his own office before bolting right out of it again, so desperate to escape.

“Idiot,” Tony muttered into the glass of the desk, “fucking… stupid, what did you goddamn think was going to happen, huh?”

He was a goddamn fool. Throwing himself at Steve like that just because he’d thought Steve had looked interested. Now for the next two weeks, everything was just going to be stilted and awkward. And if there was one thing Tony  _hated_ , it was stilted and awkward.

Fuck. Steve was his boss. What if he went to Howard about that? That’d be an absolute fucking nightmare.

He snapped the binder shut angrily and then tossed it into the box of finished work, before sitting back on his desk and staring at the ceiling. Just because he was an asshole, he even put his feet up on the desk. Or at least, he did for two seconds- after that, he just started feeling bad and then slid them off again. Steve might see the marks, and then there’d be hell to pay.

God fucking dammit- why was he even bothered? This was just some stupid interning job anyway, Tony didn’t give a shit. He should’ve just left when he’d had the chance, not gotten himself involved in any of this bullshit. Crushes sucked and nothing good ever came out of them.

Fuck Steve. Fuck this job. Two more weeks, and he’d be done. Then he could build his robots and forget all this shit.

Although somehow, forgetting about Steve seemed like something he probably wouldn’t be doing for a long while.

Christ.

 

*

 

For the most part, he managed to keep his head down and just work. His and Steve’s friendly banter managed to get unsteadily back to its feet and resume, although the lingering undertones of awkwardness were still there even as they laughed and joked as normal. It kinda sucked, and left something unpleasant in the back of his mouth. He wished he’d just kept it in his goddamn pants- then everything would have been fine. But, what was done was done, and he and Steve had managed to just sweep it under the rug and forget about it for the most part. Sometimes Tony still accidentally caught himself watching Steve worrying at his bottom lip as he worked, and the fleeting wish that it was  _Tony’s_  teeth that should be doing that popped into his mind.

He got used to stuffing those wishes down, though. Not going to happen.

Aside from that bittersweet aspect of it, Tony realized that he ended up finding his stint as an SI intern to be… kinda fun, actually. He was 90% sure that was to do with who he’d ended up working with, however, and not the job itself, which was dull as mud. But the guys down in floor 43 were funny; they ruffled his hair and called him kid and teased him about his nerdy tendencies, and Natasha would scowl at him and say he was a menace, but would always back him up when Sharon came and demanded he give her back her cookies. Sam was great to arrange office pranks with, and Thor was great to play office pranks on, and Bucky just tended to roll his eyes and then offer Tony food, because he said it was the key to every man’s heart.

It was just… it was nice. Tony wasn’t really used to having a big group of people to joke around with like that. The most he’d ever had was Rhodey. This whole charade had been an interesting breath of fresh air.

Which was why, on the night of the office party, in which everyone was celebrating the last huge payment to go through and the beginning of a nice, relaxed month- Tony was actually feeling kinda morose.

“Smile, Tony!” Bucky said, tapping him on the chin and then handing him a shot of something green. He was already fairly tipsy, and his cheeks were rosy with warmth as he beamed down at Tony, “this is a party!”

Tony rolled his eyes and took the shot glass from Bucky’s grip, throwing it back easily. It tasted like apples. If apples burnt that much. “This is an  _office_  party,” he informed Bucky with a raised eyebrow, “it’s hardly a midnight rave.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and then looked amused as he turned. “Someone should tell Stevie that,” he declared over the loud music, “guy’s really goin’ for it tonight.”

Tony’s eyes widened in surprise, and he looked over to where Bucky was staring on the other side of the floor. Steve was at the table of booze, a crowd of cheering workers around him as he chugged on a bottle of something that looked an awful lot like whiskey. He was still in his suit, but the jacket had been discarded God-knows-where, his shirt was… not even buttoned up, and his tie was circling his forehead like some sort of delinquent schoolboy.

“Damn,” Tony whistled, not taking his eyes off Steve as he threw his hands in the air and then laughed loudly, “that’s gonna be a hell of a hangover he gets in the morning.”

“You’re telling me,” Bucky shook his head fondly, “he’s been ridiculously stressed these past few weeks though. Figure he’s earned this. If he can put up with me accidentally getting hot sauce all over his best jacket whilst I was watchin’ reruns of How I Met Your Mother, I s’pose I can handle him tomorrow morning.”

Tony laughed, bumping their shoulders together and shaking his head. “Ah, I’ll miss you, Barnes,” he said fondly, and with a small shake of his head.

Bucky turned to him in confusion. “Miss me?” He said, “what, like I’m just gonna let you wander off after this? Nah- you’re the only one who can successfully convince Steve to do things, which is funny, considering you’re his fuckin’ intern. But anyway- no. I need you here. You’re my Steve whisperer.”

Tony chuckled, feeling a small flame of warmth flicker to light underneath his sternum. Huh. Bucky wanted to… still be friends, even after this? Weird. People didn’t usually… do that.

“Have you seen Steve?” Natasha slid up to them and then placed her chin on Bucky’s shoulder, arms wrapping around his waist. “He’s fucking wasted already.”

“Yeah, we were just discussing that,” Bucky responded with a grin, leaning down and kissing her forehead, “you know, some might even say he was trying to drown his sorrows for some reason.” He turned to Tony and shot a very pointed look his way, which Tony responded with by drawing his eyebrows together and just frowning in confusion.

“What the fuck is there to be sad ab-“

“It’s  _almost_  as if he’s actually  _sad_  that the busiest sector is over, because now he doesn’t have a particular intern to help him, and the particular intern in question is one that he just so happens to be smitten with,” Natasha steamrolled over him as if he hadn’t spoken, talking instead to Bucky, who nodded sagely and then turned his gaze onto Tony, a dramatic sigh falling from his lips.

Tony watched the two of them as they stared pointedly at him, and then just snorted in wry amusement. “Yeah, no, he definitely isn’t… whatever you think he is. He’s barely even spoken more than three words to me today, and it’s my last day here.” That hadn’t stung, and Tony hadn’t been bothered by it. Nope.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “God, men are absolutely ridiculous,” she muttered, before slipping forward and then pulling Tony into a sudden hug. He blinked in surprise- the most affection Natasha usually extended to him was not punching him as hard as she could when he pissed her off. This was definitely new territory. “He’s got a crush the size of a small continent, Tony. And now he’s mopey because you’re leaving. Just go kiss him already.”

“I tried!” Tony blurted, and Natasha pulled away from him to look in surprise, “I fucking did, like, two weeks ago, and he pushed me away and said it was a bad idea! So… yeah. He’s not.”

“Are we talking about kissing?” And suddenly Thor popped up out of absolutely nowhere, making Tony jump in surprise. For such a massive guy, he was very good at being sneaky. “Tony, who are you kissing? Don’t you think Steve might be upset at that?”

“What, I-“ Tony spluttered, shaking head rapidly, “no, Thor, there is no kissing-“

“Tony kissed Steve two weeks ago but Steve pushed him away, and now we’re all very confused,” Bucky piped up and revealed before Tony could even stop him. Thor’s eyes widened, and he shuffled into the growing circle of people, his massive jug of beer overspilling onto Tony’s shirt.

“Tony did  _what_?” He turned around and the next new voice, and oh fuck, that was  _Sam_  now, what the fuck was this, a ‘let’s embarrass Tony’ gathering? Come on.

“Look, everyone just can it, alright,” Tony sliced a hand through the air grumpily, turning around to the table and then focusing on the cute little hors d'oeuvres that were littered out on the surface. “I made a move, and he cut me off. It happens. But you’re all wrong, and he’s not interested, okay? End of.”

The small circle was silent for a second, and Tony had a brief hope that he might actually have made it sink in, but a moment later everyone’s disagreeing murmurs rose up, and he sighed to himself. They were a fucking stubborn bunch, that was for sure.

Tony managed to steer the conversation onto safer territories after a few more minutes of ribbing, but the thoughts still lingered in the back of his mind. They all seemed so convinced, and they were some of his closest friends, right? That had to…

No. It didn’t mean anything. He’d  _proved_  that it didn’t mean anything.

He concentrated on the party, allowing himself to have fun with the new friends he’d made and not feel too morose about the fact this was his last night here. Hell- seeing as his dad owned the company, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t just walk back in any time he wanted. And he’d had... a surprising amount of fun, while it had lasted. Discounting the first week, perhaps, when he’d been a less than pleasant employee, overall it hadn’t been as awful as what he’d been expecting.

And he still had a ton of summer break left to go. So really, he hadn’t missed out on much.

A few hours later, everything began to die down. People filtered off- some going in groups, laughing loudly and ready to make a night of it in New York, others alone and happy to just fall into bed, and a few pairs, holding hands as they slipped off into the night. Tony was surprisingly sober- he’d been too busy talking to everyone to think about drinking, actually, which was certainly a first. But now he was simply sat on one of the tables, tie hanging loosely around his neck, watching Bucky and Natasha as they slow-danced to  _Sexy Back_  by Justin Timberlake.

They certainly made for an interesting pair, Tony would give them that.

Steve was nowhere to be seen, which was slightly confusing. Maybe he’d just gone home without saying goodbye. Or maybe he’d gone off with one of the other people here, back to their place. Who knew? Who cared? Not Tony.

Slipping off the surface of the table, he patted Bucky on the back and then gestured over to the door. “Think I’m gonna call it a night,” he said with a smile, “all you office workers are party animals. Tired me out.”

Bucky nodded, spinning him and Natasha so that they were both facing him. “Yeah, we really know how to turn up when we wanna,” he slurred, his grin dopey as his hands wandered down to Natasha’s ass.

She rolled her eyes and then kissed him quickly, before stepping out of his hold and turning to Tony, wrapping him into a gentle hug. “You’re annoying, Little Prick Junior. Gonna miss you hanging around.”

“You always say the nicest things.”

She grinned, and then flicked him delicately between the eyes. “Go visit Steve’s office,” she told him with a smile, “I think you might have left something behind.”

Tony frowned. He was almost certain that he’d cleared out his space of everything important before he’d-

“ _Tony_ ,” she said, shooting him a pointed look, “go visit Steve’s office.” She gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the elevator, before waving and stepping back into Bucky’s arms. “I’ll see you ‘round, идиотский мальчик.”

He grinned back at the two of them and waved a hand, before stepping away and heading over to the elevator. The doors slid shut around him, leaving the noise of the function room behind, and his ears rang in the silence.

Glancing at the buttons, he sighed before hitting the one for Steve’s office. Might as well go and see what Natasha was talking about.

 

He found out two minutes later, when he pushed open the door and saw none other than Steve Rogers, sat on the floor with a bottle of half-empty whiskey and his back pressed up against the foot of the desk.

 

“Oh,” he blurted, and Steve’s head flew up, recognizing Tony and then lighting into a dopey smile. “Hey Steve. Didn’t know you were up here.”

Steve giggled, and then pulled himself up to his feet, wavering precariously for a moment. He was very, very drunk. “Tonyyyyyyy,” he sang, stumbling forward with his arms outstretched, “Tony, why do you have to gooooo?”

There was a pout on Steve’s mouth that should quite frankly be illegal, and he looked genuinely saddened as he continued. “You’re so… great. You’re great, Tony, y’know that? Fuckin’… asshole sometimes- drove me mad, first few days, but … God, you’re so…” Steve waved a lazy hand through the air, trying to grab at words he apparently couldn’t find as he pulled a face.

Tony looked up at him, holding back a smile. “Thanks, Steve,” he said, “you’re pretty great too.”

“No no  _no no_ , no, not like that,” Steve whined, and he stepped closer and lifted his hands, dropping them onto Tony’s shoulders as he pulled a sad face, “you only think I’m great as a… as a buddy. An’ I don’ wanna be a buddy. Not your buddy.” He shook his head, and Tony’s eyes widened a little as he felt Steve’s thumbs stroke up the juncture of his neck gently.

“You don’t want to be my buddy,” Tony repeated blankly, as Steve just nodded above him and continued to trace the tendons of Tony’s neck reverently, his half-lidded eyes dark and fixed on Tony’s mouth. Fuck, this was like the stupid store cupboard fiasco all over again; Tony was going to start getting the wrong idea if Steve carried on-

“Hey,” Steve whispered, leaning closer, “wanna know a… an amazingly relieving lil’ fact?”

Tony needed to remember how to breathe. Steve was very drunk right now. He probably didn’t even realize he was so close. “Uhm. Go on then.”

Steve grinned. “You’re not my intern anymore.”

The look of happiness on Steve’s face at those words made Tony feel even shittier than he’d thought possible, and he felt his own face drop before he could contain the disappointment. “Yeah,” he said softly, “yeah, guess I’m n-“

“So now I can kiss you without feelin’ like a tool,” Steve carried on, which, whoah, where the hell had  _that_  come from?

Of course, just as Tony was about to ask, he found himself otherwise occupied. Because in that moment, Steve leaned down and kissed him, hot and hard and messy, pulling him in by the shoulders and holding on tight, like any second Tony might bolt.

It lacked finesse thanks to Steve’s drunkenness, but Jesus Christ, it was still like tasting heaven. Tony gasped in surprise, hands automatically coming around Steve’s waist and holding him tight as he pushed himself forward and pressed up against Steve’s chest, leaning onto his tiptoes to get the best angle because fuck him, Steve was tall.

Shit. Steve was smashed off his face. Tony should really not be doing this. Steve was only going to regret it in the morning.

“Hey, I don’t-“ Steve broke away suddenly, eyes widening as he looked down at Tony, “you’re into this, right? I don’t wanna… last time you said it was a mistake, and I don’t wanna… you gotta be comfortable, Tony, right? You’re comf-“

“Yep,” Tony breathed out sharply before he could even stop himself, leaning back into Steve’s arms and throwing his hands around the other man’s neck. “Very very very comfortable.”

Steve grinned up against Tony’s mouth, and before he even knew what was happening, Steve was putting those considerable biceps to good use and hauling Tony’s legs up off the ground, lifting him up. Tony outright moaned at the show of strength, wrapping his legs around Steve’s waist and then allowing the other man to turn and walk them over to the desk, which he proceeded to then lean forward and lay Tony out on, his mouth never leaving its place on Tony’s neck.

“I thought you had rules about your desk,” Tony huffed in amusement, looking up at Steve with an eyebrow raised.

“Fuck the stupid desk rules, I’ve wanted to do this for weeks,” Steve muttered, diving in again and taking Tony’s mouth in a searing kiss, “d’you… fuck, you’re so fuckin gorgeous, wanted to just bend you over and put my hands all over you, shit, Tony,” he breathed in sharply, hand curling around Tony’s jaw as he kissed deep and then let his free set of fingers curl around the belt on Tony’s jeans.

In that moment, Tony really, truly wished that he was drunker. It would be okay if he was drunker.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t. He was fairly sober, whereas Steve was quite clearly wasted. Tony… Jesus, no matter how much he might want to, he couldn’t let Steve fuck him on his prim and proper desk-space if he was only going to wake up and be horrified in the morning.

This was so unfair.

“Steve,” he said, his hands going to the man’s beautifully broad, wonderful shoulders and pushing him away a little, “Steve, stop.”

He did, albeit with a small whimper of distress. His concerned face looked down at Tony as he sat up a little and cocked his head. “’sup?”

God, he was so fucking beautiful. “You’re too drunk for this, Rogers. No clothes are being removed until I know you’d want it if you were sober. Which is somewhat doubtful.”

Steve’s brow creased, and then he snorted, leaning down and capturing his mouth in a kiss again. Tony accepted, because goddamn it, Steve was addictive and Tony had very little willpower. “Believe me, I want this when I’m sober. I want this whenever I see ya. Pinkie promise.”

Tony giggled, actually fucking  _giggled_ \- but he still shook his head. “No can do, Steven. I think you’re done for the night anyway. Have you booked a taxi? You live down in Brooklyn, right?”

Steve whined, pawing at his shirt like a sulky puppy. Tony wanted to just rip his clothes right off him. God damn it, the  _one_  time he’d not been drunk at a party and this happened. “Dunno. Mean… know I live in Brooklyn, d’no how’da get home. Walk, prob’ly. Ain’t got no cash.”

Tony pulled an incredulous face, sitting up. “Nah, we’re not walking all that way, Jesus, are you fucking crazy? Listen, my dad’s got the penthouse apartment and I know the passcode to get in. He won’t be using it, not tonight- he’s down in Florida for business. Just come crash there for the night.”

Steve blinked at him, trying to get his head around it. “Can we have sex?” He asked.

“No.” Tony paused, before adding on “unless you wake up in the morning and still want sex. Then big yes.”

Steve groaned dramatically, leaning into Tony’s shoulder. “Morning is so looooooooong away,” he whined, whilst Tony just laughed fondly.

“You are an adorable drunk, you know that?” He said as he slid off the desk and then tugged Steve down with him, who followed unsteadily, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist and attaching himself like a limpet.

“You’re jus’ adorable,” Steve responded, running his hand through Tony’s hair as he led them both into the elevator, “cute… look at your lil’ curls, they’re so-”

“Yeah yeah, shut up now, I’m not cute,” Tony told him, pressing a finger to his lips and then pushing the button for the penthouse floor. He quickly typed in the four-digit password in the keypad at the bottom, and then leaned Steve against a wall so that he wouldn’t fall over somehow. He kept swaying like there was a strong wind; it was actually pretty hilarious.

Steve refused to let go of Tony the entire time, and Tony was happy to be held, just revelling in the contact he was almost sure that Steve was going to regret in the morning. He probably would’ve tried to fuck anyone who walked through that door- Tony sometimes forgot the guy was only 23, and built like a college fratboy. He should really be getting laid every night, looking like that.

“Come on, Rogers,” Tony said when the elevator opened up to the penthouse suite. He went to take Steve by the wrist, but Steve moved at the last second, and they ended up holding hands instead. Which was fine, obviously, Tony could deal with a bit of hand holding, Steve had been trying to take off his pants moments ago- so why the hell was this the thing that was making his heart feel as if it was beating out of his chest? Dammit.

Tony led them both to the guest bedroom and flicked on the lights, pulling a face at the slightly musty smell of it. The cleaners came and tidied up every week, but it just smelt like it wasn’t lived in at all. Steve seemed pretty impressed though- his mouth fell open at the glass wall on the opposite side, which showed the entirety of New York, and he stumbled forward with a hand outstretched, like he was going to try and touch the horizon.

Of course, that might have worked out a little better if he hadn’t been quite so drunk. As it was, his legs decided to ignore the rest of his body leaning forward, and he ended up faceplanting into the rug before Tony could even attempt to catch him.

“Shit!” Tony said, grabbing his shoulders and just about managing to save his head from cracking into the floor, “alright big guy, I think it’s time to get you lying down.”

Steve laughed, turning his head and looking up at Tony dopily. “Y’know, I thought you were gonna be a nightmare,” he admitted as Tony hauled him back into standing and then directed him over toward the bed, “thought I was gonna end up punchin’ you in the fuckin’ nose by the end of th’week.”

“Yeah, I probably deserved that,” Tony told him, sitting him down on the mattress and switching on the side lamp.

Steve caught his wrist, and then leaned forward and pressed a surprisingly gentle kiss against Tony’s nose. “’M glad I didn’t,” he whispered, “like your nose. Pretty.”

Tony huffed out a laugh, tugging the tie off Steve’s neck and then smoothing out his mess of hair. “It  _is_  pretty, isn’t it.”

“The prettiest. You’re…” Steve frowned, and then suddenly flopped onto the bed and groaned petulantly. “I don’t want you to go. You’re a good intern. And I like watching your ass.” He sat up suddenly again, looking at Tony with wide eyes. “Don’ report me for that please, I don’t wanna attend another sexual harassment course. Actually, jus’ don’t be my intern again. I remember- I  _don’t_  want you as an intern, ‘cause then I can’t kiss you and that s-“

Tony pushed him backward onto the pillows before he could continue his barely coherent ramble, a stupid smile on his face. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? Just… get some sleep Steve, okay? You’re gonna need it.” He stood straight and then prepared to move to the couch on the other side of the room, but before he got the chance, Steve stuck his hand out and grabbed Tony’s wrist, pulling him back.

“Stay,” Steve asked him, his eyes so stupidly wide and hopeful, “please?”

Fucking Christ. How on earth was Tony ever supposed to say no to that?

“Don’t ask me to have sex with you,” Tony warned as he flopped down next to Steve and rested his head on the pillow, looking over into those ridiculously blue eyes and wondering how the hell he’d ended up there at all.

Steve smiled, eyes already starting to fall shut. “In th’mornin,” he promised, “in the mornin’ I’ll… I’ll…”

Tony never found out what Steve’s plan was. A second later, the man was asleep, snoring gently and looking the picture of contentment in the guest bed that he’d sprawled out in like an octopus. Tony watched him breathe for a few moments, before shaking his head and then turning to look at the ceiling.

Well. He could check sleeping with his boss of the bucket-list, he supposed, as he shut his own eyes and settled down to rest.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

When Steve woke up, it immediately felt wrong.

For starters, it wasn’t his bed. He knew his bed, and this wasn’t it. This was way to big, and soft, and there was too much light hitting it. Steve didn’t have a lot of windows in his apartment, so it was never really this bright in the morning.

Which meant he was in someone else’s place.

He blinked, becoming more aware of his surroundings with every passing second. He was lying on his side, one arm thrown out and resting on something warm. Something breathing.

Oh shit.

Head jolting up, he looked down at the person lying next to him, bare chested and still fast asleep. His dark curls were haloed around the pillow, and in sleep he looked calm and serene, completely beautiful.

He was in bed with Tony Stark.

_“Sonuvabitch,”_  he swore as he scrabbled upright rapidly, hand curling around the sheets and pulling upward, checking what he was wearing. It made him pause in confusion for a moment when he realized he still had his work pants on, although his shirt had apparently gone missing.

What the fuck had he done last night?

Beside him, Tony was stirring awake slowly, a clumsy hand pawing at his face as he yawned. Steve stared at him, horror-struck. The last he remembered, Tony hadn’t been interested in Steve at all. So what had happened since then to change his mind?

“St’ve?” Tony muttered, his voice croaky from sleep. He turned in the bed and then cracked an eye open, looking up at Steve through it. “What’re you doing?”

“Uhhhh.” Steve blinked rapidly, lost for words. “I. How did I… what? Did I? Did we… where am I?” He squeaked out quietly, feeling something horrible pound at the back of his head.

Tony grinned, and when he shuffled on the bed, Steve caught the strip of his boxers flash against the crisp white of the sheets. It was strangely transfixing. “God, you really were fucking wasted last night.” He sat up slowly, running a hand through his hair. “You’re still in Stark Tower, actually. Penthouse suite. As for the ‘we’ part- no, we didn’t have sex.” If anything, Tony looked slightly put out at that. “You were too drunk. Felt like I should wait until you were more clear-headed before any pants were removed.”

Steve mulled over the sentence in his fuzzy brain, a few murky memories coming back to him and making him cringe. “Oh shit,” he murmured, “I was… wow, I had a lot to drink last night.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Tony told him wryly, “you tasted like a damn minibar.”

“I…” Steve stopped as the memory came back to him. And oh, what a memory it was. His nicely organized desk was going to be absolutely ruined when he went back to it tomorrow. “We kissed? Yeah, yeah- we kissed, didn’t we?”

Tony nodded slowly, looking somewhat apprehensive about it. Steve wasn’t sure where exactly to look- Tony appeared to be avoiding his eye, and Steve didn’t want to make it any more awkward for him.

Shit. Steve had thrown himself at Tony, and then begged him to stay the night. And now it was morning and Tony probably couldn’t wait for him to leave.

“I am…” Steve breathed out, shutting his eyes, “Tony, I am so sorry. I know you’re not interested- this was completely inappropriate of me and I should never have-“

“Hey, whoah, uhhh,” Tony waved a hand, looking up at him suddenly. “Not interested? Since when have I not been interested?”

Steve paused, and then frowned slightly incredulously. “Since you told me that first kiss was a mistake and you promised it would never happen again?”

“Yeah, because you up and bailed halfway through and I wanted to preserve my damn dignity!” Tony pointed a finger at him accusingly, and Steve just froze, his poor hungover brain attempting to process the information.

So… so Tony  _did_  like him, then?

“You said,” Tony continued slowly, looking down at his hands again, “last night. You said I was- I was gorgeous. That you’d been thinking about me for weeks. That true?”

Ah, hell. Well. What the fuck did Steve have to lose now? Tony was leaving anyway. “Yeah,” he said quietly, mustering up all the strength he could find and looking Tony in the eye. “Yeah, I did.”

There was a short pause, and then a small, “huh.” Then they were both silent again.

Steve looked over to Tony, who looked back, and then they both breathed out at the same time. Steve figured he looked like hell; he certainly  _felt_  like hell, and really, Tony should be a million miles away by now. He’d seen Steve last night- god,  _anyone_  who had seen Steve last night would be running right now.

Although to be fair, Tony was mad as a box of cats and had just the right amount of stubborn in him to keep up with Steve. That… that made things look promising.

“You said last night,” Steve thought back a few hours ago, when he’d been looking at Tony across the pillows and thinking about how perfect he was, “that if I asked to have sex with you in the morning you’d say yes?”

Tony froze, but then his face split into a cheeky grin that Steve sometimes saw when Tony was about to pull a prank or get his way. “I did, yes,” he nodded sagely and then leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees as he looked up at Steve. “And as of today, I am no longer your intern, which means-“

“No stupid fraternization rules,” Steve finished with a jolt of enthusiasm. Tony wiggled his eyebrows in delight, and Steve just chuckled. His head was still banging, and he really needed a shower, but he had a few priorities to attend to first.

“Tony?” He asked.

“Yeah?”

“Can we have sex now?”


End file.
